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Snipe Pie

A Danish pie made with snipe, beef forcemeat, and a sauce of wine, broth, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Snipe Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the snipe and forcemeat

  1. Parboil the snipe in broth and white wine with grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Make a forcemeat by finely scraping beef and fat pork.

  3. Pound the forcemeat and mix with butter and soaked roll crumbs.

  4. Season the forcemeat with grated onion, pepper, allspice, cloves, mushrooms, and chopped gherkins, thinning with broth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with forcemeat.

  2. Place the snipe inside the dish with some soup and a small piece of butter.

  3. Cover the snipe with more forcemeat.

  4. Bake for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine soup, white wine, water, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Stir the sauce until smooth and boiling.

  3. Add sliced pickled gherkins or lemon before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the bulk of the forcemeat, giving the pie its substance and meaty texture.
Fat pork
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and tender as it bakes.
Roll crumbs
Soaked and mixed into the forcemeat, they bind it and add a softer texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the forcemeat and sauce, contributing flavour and moisture.
Flour
Rolled into butter and whisked into the sauce, it thickens the liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the parboiling liquid and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until smooth and boiling. Flour-thickened liquids can form lumps if not stirred well, and the starch must reach a boil to fully thicken and lose its raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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